Targeted Traffic & Affiliate Marketing – Getting Backlinks With Article Marketing

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://top-traffic-tips.com – All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Affiliate marketing success depends on driving enough targeted traffic to merchants’ sites through your affiliate marketing links. There are a number of ways to achieve this goal, and the more ways you can master the greater your chances for success in your own affiliate marketing business. One of the most successful ways to accomplish this is through article marketing.

For those just getting started, understand that this doesn’t refer to marketing articles online, but rather to using articles as part of your marketing mix. Since most people come online looking for information, providing that information through articles you’ve authored is a great way to get their attention – and done right can lead them to take the desired action by clicking through to the affiliate offers you’re promoting.

This is a two-step process; first you have to provide good, solid content that fills their needs, and then you have to distribute the articles in such a way as to be sure they can find your articles in the first place. To achieve the former, be sure that the articles you author are of interest mostly to the market you’re targeting, and that every single article provides useful information for them. Anyone can write fluff – distinguish yourself as an expert in your field by sticking to solid, helpful information that’s dead-on targeted to them.

Once you’ve started writing your articles you need to get them online where they can be found, that is you need to start your article marketing process. Article directories are the most common place for people to search for information, and generally have strong positioning in the major search engines. Make use of this relationship by only submitting your articles to the top few directories, and by being sure you’ve included links to your blogs and squeeze pages along with a call to action in your Author’s Resource Box at the end of each article.

Every time you have an article published at a major article directory you’ve created another backlink to your sites. This is important for two reasons – both because you can garner traffic directly from the readers at the directory and because the search engines just found another high-authority site that links to yours, which can boost your rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs). And each boost there can help to bring more targeted traffic to your sites.

In addition, the best article directories also make the articles available to bloggers, webmasters and newsletter publishers who can use your articles as long as they leave your copyright and links intact and active. If you can author articles that get published via this system, you can end up generating a number of additional backlinks through those blogs and websites, and get direct traffic from the readers of those e-zines as well.

It’s also important to note that a myriad of affiliate marketing techniques, strategies and tricks have come and gone since the web was established in 1994, but providing good, solid content through article marketing has always been and will continue to be one of the darlings of the search engines – after all, their sole purpose is to make it easy for people to find the information they need, and you’re providing that information in your articles. As long as you’re writing unique, on-topic articles that genuinely provide helpful information you won’t need to worry about the next update in any search engine’s algorithm – they need the article directories as much as you need the targeted search engine traffic!

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Download your free Article Marketing Overview (PDF & MP3) now to learn more about harnessing the power of article marketing. For more help from super-affiliate Doug Champigny, be sure to check out the articles on his Start Affiliate Marketing site.

Technorati Tags: article marketing, affiliate marketing, getting backlinks, article directories, search engines, marketing, marketing mentor Doug Champigny

There is no argument that article marketing is the most effective type of marketing that you can do to build traffic to your websites, but many of those who want to market with articles don’t know how many articles they need for the efforts to be rewarded.

Many will write and distribute one or two articles, thinking that is enough. In some cases, it may be enough, but it isn’t really enough to build credibility – and by limiting yourself in such a way, you are literally leaving money on the table.

Instead, you need to have an article marketing regimen. You should schedule writing and submission into your schedule on a weekly basis if possible, and on a monthly basis at the very least.

If you do the work yourself, it takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to write the article, and it can take about one eight hour day to get it submitted to all of the repositories. If you outsource the work, it takes five minutes of your time to contact your ghost writer, and another five minutes to contact your submission service.

Articles can become very viral, spreading far and wide. building backlinks to your websites and garnering direct traffic through clicks on the links in your Author’s Resource Box. This benefits you and your business, and it stands to reason that the more articles you can produce and submit, the more viral it all becomes. Each and every article that you put out there will be constantly working for you, helping you build website traffic!

If time is a problem, and outsourcing is something that you don’t feel that you can afford, take a few weekends for your article marketing. Write 52 articles, and distribute one each week for an entire year. Sometimes, writing the articles in advance, all at one time, can put your ahead of the article marketing game.

The important thing is that you do get articles out there on a regular basis. Keep your name visible, and continue to send out the articles that will send great benefits back to you by building the most targeted website traffic you can obtain.

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Marketing mentor Doug Champigny is an avid article marketer – check out some of Doug Champigny’s marketing articles and be sure to download his Free Article Marketing Overview. Doug Champigny is a world-famous marketer with a major online presence who often appears live onstage at marketing seminars, conferences, conventions and workshops around North America – watch for him speaking live at a function near you!

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Technorati Tags: article marketing, website traffic, writing articles, build traffic, targeted traffic, Doug Champigny

These days, the most intelligent way to build your affiliate marketing web site is with a self-hosted WordPress blog, since much of your design and ongoing maintenance are automated on affiliate marketing blogs. But just as with static web sites, it’s vitally important that you properly manage the search engine optimization (SEO) on your affiliate marketing web site.

First, pay particular attention to the title of each post you make, being sure your target keywords or keyword phrase are prominent in the title itself. This is especially true for affiliate marketing blogs, since the title of the post is usually also used as the URL for that page and you’ll want the search engines finding those keywords both in the title and the URL to give you the best possible shot at high search engine rankings. Remember that Google, Yahoo, Bing and the smaller engines rate pages, not sites, so it’s important that every page be optimized for the keywords that particular page is targeting.

Next, using appropriate plugins be sure you’ve chosen the right tags and description for the page. Again these can affect your affiliate marketing blog’s position on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Further, many engines display your description of the page, so you want it to be enticing to your target market in the hopes of having your prospects click through and visit your blog.

Understand and utilize the current SEO practices when writing your content – most search engines provide plenty of information on how they rank the pages they index. And while it’s important to use your keywords or keyword phrases in your copy for each post, never lose site of the fact that you’re writing your posts for your prospects, not the search engines.

When you’ve gone to the effort to bring targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing web site you want them to be pleasantly surprised at the amount of quality content, ease of navigation and the gentle flow of ideas that leads them merrily along their way to buying the products at the other end of your affiliate links. Your affiliate marketing pay will be negligible or non-existent if you’ve written your posts strictly to rank well in the SERPs and your target audience find it difficult to read or follow.

Finally, make sure you’ve also included your page’s target keywords in the alt tags of any images that accompany the text, in the links to that page from other pages on the blog, and in any description or summary you offer of the page for your index and/or RSS feeds. Get in the habit of doing at least this much SEO for each and every post or page on your affiliate marketing blogs.

Trying to remember and incorporate all of this while still keeping your pages strong for your targeted viewers may seem like quite a trick at first, but with regular practice it can become second nature and can result in a powerful and profitable affiliate marketing web site for you as it builds over time.

About The Author

Affiliate marketing mentor, coach and speaker Doug Champigny has been teaching companies new marketing strategies since the 1970’s, having owned and operated his own retail advertising agency before transferring to marketing online full-time since 1996. A recognized expert in how to market a product online or offline and master of these new online marketing strategies, Doug Champigny is the creator of the PowerStart Marketing coaching program and the Affiliate Marketing PowerStart coaching program, and is occasionally available for private 1-on-1 consultations and mentoring as well.

Doug is a regular speaker at many of the live marketing events and conventions around North America – watch for him speaking live onstage in your area soon! In the meantime, for more help getting started as an affiliate, see the Affiliate Marketing 101 lens on Squidoo and the Start Affiliate Marketing info at WetPaint.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing blogs, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing web sites, marketing blogs

Why 59 New People Started Sending Me Free Traffic Today

© 2010 Doug Champigny. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet Traffic Rush launched on Thursday (2 days ago) and just took off right from the get-go. And no wonder – this incredible new Twitter traffic tool uses a 10-level downline to build your credits virally…

Credits for what, you ask? Take a look at this Tweet Traffic Rush widget:

Not much different from a lot of other WordPress widgets, right? Wrong. The Tweet Traffic Rush widget can be placed on ANY site – blogs, static sites, social media sites, etc. For the first time, your tweets can now be seen outside of blogs and social media sites – they can be put on any static sites too, thus exposing your tweets to people who may not use Twitter, social sites or visit your blog yet.

Benefits Of Using Tweet Traffic Rush:

So how do you benefit from using this free system? First, of course, because your links in your tweets remain clickable, meaning that for each page view you get on any page the widget is on, you get your tweet shown on someone else’s site. This alone has the potential to bring you in more traffic – how much traffic depends on how many credits you earn…

But notice the link at the bottom of the widget? Every time someone clicks through on that and gets their own free account, you get a matching credit for each one they earn. Over time, that can lead to a lot of credits – a lot of chances for people to click on the links in YOUR tweets, creating more traffic to YOUR sites! And this overflow from below you can go up to 10 levels deep over time!

Obviously as a traffic master my results aren’t typical, but look at the action so far today alone:

Now do you see the power of the Tweet Traffic Rush system? And before you think it’s just because we have hundreds of sites and a big opt-in list, take a look at the action in my downline today:

Today I earned 57 credits (top chart) and referred 8 new people to the system (Level 1, bottom chart). But thanks to my downline I also got 5094 more credits, and 51 additional people in my downline – all through other people’s activities.

The result? Just today, I have 5,151 more credits – over 5,000 more exposures for my tweets, and another 59 people who will be earning me more credits every day. You can start to see the potential of Tweet Traffic Rush, especially considering the site just launched 2 days ago…

Don’t miss out on putting this powerful system to work for you too – as you can see from the numbers above, I could stop talking about it now and go on to my next project, secure in the knowledge that my downline has hit critical mass and will keep growing for me completely through the efforts of others.

Like the idea of other people building your Twitter following and your targeted traffic? Then get into Tweet Traffic Rush today!

Technorati Tags: tweet traffic rush, tweet traffic rush benefits, tweet traffic rush review, traffic from twitter, twitter traffic, twitter tools, targeted traffic, free targeted traffic

New Video & Free Report – Build Traffic and Build Opt-In Lists

Here’s a new video for you from Internet marketing mentor Doug Champigny, showing how to build traffic and build opt-in lists using your affiliate marketing program:

If you don’t already have an affiliate marketing program but DO have one or more products for sale online, I recommend you check out http://www.Hosting4Marketers.com, where you get hosting, unlimited pro autoresponders and your own affiliate marketing program for about $20 a month – well worth it just for the affiliate program alone!

Also, at the end of this video you’ll see mention of a free report called ‘7 Ways to Build Traffic & Build Opt-In Lists For Internet Marketing‘ – download this powerful free traffic-building report now!

Technorati Tags: build traffic, build targeted traffic, free traffic report, build opt-in lists, affiliate marketing, Internet marketing, marketing mentor Doug Champigny

Have you started driving targeted traffic with online video yet? If you have, the results are incredible, aren’t they? If you haven’t, it has to be because you haven’t yet realized it’s rapidly becoming the number one way to build traffic on the Internet today.

The subject of using videos in Internet marketing or affiliate marketing is top-of-mind for me today, since I’m creating a video tutorial on the subject just for my students in the PowerStart Marketing Coaching Program. But while this tutorial is just for them and won’t be available outside of the classes, I still wanted to share some thoughts with you about this powerful form of traffic generation.

First, of course, uploading your marketing videos to sites like YouTube and Viddler can bring you a lot of attention – especially if your video catches the public’s fancy and they start sharing it, embedding it on their blogs and telling friends about it. Some of these ‘viral videos’ have ended up with MILLIONS of views and great response – just think about the branding factor alone!

Second, if you’re an internet marketer with an affiliate program, you can make your videos available to your affiliates to use in their marketing mix, making it easier for them, and you, to make more money online. And nothing motivates affiliates, even super-affiliates, like making money hand-over-fist!

Third, using videos as part of your online marketing efforts can double or triple your response from social sites like Twitter. It’s much easier to get social traffic to click a link to your article, blog post or video than it is to a squeeze page or salespage – unless, of course, the video is on one of those two, in which case you invite them to view the video without saying anything about the page it’s on.

Fourth, videos get you into the video directories, of course – meaning wider exposure for your marketing message. Your site gets you into the search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing, your articles get you into article directories like EzineArticles and GoArticles, your blog gets you into the blog directories like Tehnorati & MyBlogLog, your audios get you into the podcast directories like iTunes & Podcast Alley, and your videos get you into video directories like YouTube & Viddler. That 5-pronged marketing saturation strategy is part of the PowerStart program, and is the most effective method of driving traffic at the present time – done right even paid advertising would be hard-pressed to match the results!

So the question now isn’t ARE you going to use video as part of your traffic building arsenal, nor even WHEN are you going to start using video – the real question is what’s the fastest way to get up to speed with online video for marketing? HOW do you harness it’s power to build traffic right away?

Two choices I can wholeheartedly recommend: the coaching program, as I’ve already mentioned, and a new monthly ‘done-for-you’ video creation service that creates professional videos for you each month at an extremely affordable rate. But to get these custom marketing videos made for you, you’ll have to act quickly – they’re only opening the doors to the site for four days starting next week.

Jump on this pending opportunity right now by joining the pre-launch information list so that you have the best chance of being one of the lucky ones to get a new video made just for you each month at rock-bottom prices for top-shelf videos. You can check here to see if you’re in time…

And either way, be sure to check out the details of the PowerStart Marketing Coaching Series – video is just one of the ways to drive massive traffic online, and you’ll want to now how to create videos and all the related ways to drive traffic as well!

You KNOW you need video to keep up now – so what’s it going to be? Which way will YOU use video to drive targeted traffic to your sites, blogs, squeeze pages and affiliate marketing links?

Technorati Tags: video marketing, using video to drive traffic, using video to build traffic, traffic from videos, targeted traffic

Web 2.0 Beats Search Engines For Faster Internet Marketing Success

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://top-traffic-tips.com. All Rights Reserved.

Internet marketing continues to grow by leaps and bounds, with more and more people turning to it as a means of creating additional income, replacing their full-time jobs or in an attempt to get rich. Concurrently, more and more people are turning to the Internet for their purchasing, so the two growth trends are nicely balanced.

But for someone just starting out with their first online business, it can be difficult to ascertain the proper promotional methods to achieve the quickest success online. Because the industry is evolving so rapidly, much of the available information is outdated or less important now than it was when published even 6 months or a year ago.

For example, until recently the keywords tag on each web page was very important and worth spending a fair bit of time tweaking. With most of the big search engines now skipping that tag, the importance of keywords has more to do with your page titles and domain names than it does with your meta-tags.

Similarly, the amount of time spent tweaking the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site, while still important, is no longer paramount to your Internet marketing efforts. The emergence of the Web 2.0 interactive sites has seriously challenged the search engines as the ultimate way to drive targeted traffic, especially immediate traffic.

Don’t misunderstand – it would be foolhardy to totally ignore the search engines as they drive so much of the traffic online. Do what you can to achieve great results within the search engine ranking pages (SERPs), but don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on it, especially when first launching your site.

Still do your initial keyword research within your niche to choose your domain name, page titles, etc, but then get the site online and start actively promoting it using the power of article directories, podcast directories, video directories, blog posts, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, Squidoo, Google knol, HubPages, etc.

Each of these promotional avenues is free to use, so learn to use them both individually and in concert with each other to create almost instant targeted traffic. Traffic from search engines usually takes longer to build, unless you’re purchasing ads on the site which can bring in immediate visitors but can also be extremely expensive in popular niches.

While this formula will probably change again down the road, for the present time your focus for building your traffic and your lists should be on using the Web 2.0 properties for the fastest visibility, and the search engines as part of your long-term strategy. Taken together, this should be your best recipe for success with you Internet marketing!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny is a world-famous Internet marketing coach, mentor and speaker and the creator of the PowerStart Marketing 4-week Internet Marketing Crash Course. To learn more about Doug or to book him to speak at your next event, contact him through his blog at http://DougChampigny.com.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, internet marketing success, targeted traffic, search engine optimization, Web 2.0

Affiliate Marketing Strategy: Choosing The Right Traffic Tools

©2009 Doug Champigny. All Rights Reserved.

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest ways to make money online, and the usual starting point for most work-at-home online businesses. Since the product, web site, sales copy and often even sample e-mails are already created by the merchant, affiliate marketing success simply involves sending enough targeted traffic through your affiliate link to the merchant’s site.

There are paid options to drive targeted traffic, such as the Pay-Per-Click ads you see in the major search engines, ads on web sites and blogs, and solo ads and sponsor ads in e-zines in the niche. But most people starting out with any work-at-home business need to conserve what little investment capital they have, and as such should focus on the myriad of free methods of generating targeted traffic.

The first concern is to decide which traffic tools are right for each affiliate promotion you’re doing. Look over the salespage and decide whether this product or service is short-lived, like a 7-day sale, or liable to be around a long time, like say a dog training guide. Is it a one-time sale, or can you earn recurring commissions as when promoting a monthly membership site or ongoing service?

If it’s short term, focus on the fast traffic generators like Twitter, your e-zine, your blog and social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon or Digg. You want targeted traffic that hits almost instantly, and don’t need to waste time using long-term traffic methods.

If it’s going to be around a while, start by using those same short-term methods to get sales started quickly, then hop over and do some articles, a Squidoo lens and a Google Knol. That gets you the quick traffic from the former, and then keeps some residual targeted traffic going to the page from the latter. If the conversions are good, keep up the short-term til results start to taper off, all the while adding to your long-term efforts. If results aren’t great, let your long-term efforts to date suffice and move on to the next product.

If you’re promoting an affiliate marketing opportunity that pays residual commissions, pull out all stops. Do all of the above, plus record & submit some podcasts, videos and press releases, do either a recorded interview with the site owner or a live teleseminar, use the recording in giveaways, do a few e-zine swaps and maybe even create some viral e-books on the topic to help promote your affiliate links.

In short, there are a lot of ways to drive targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing links for free – just be sure to use the right tools to match the potential returns, start off slow and if you see your affiliate commissions mounting, turn on the afterburners and maximize your return before moving on to your next affiliate marketing opportunity.

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About The Author

Doug Champigny is a well-known Internet marketing mentor, speaker and super-affiliate. For more on affiliate marketing read his Captain Affiliate Affiliate Marketing Training Blog. For more detailed information on 14 ways to drive free targeted traffic to your links, see Doug’s Top Traffic Tips training.

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Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing strategies, affiliate marketing tips, targeted traffic, building traffic, traffic tactics

Hang on to your hats – of all the free info you’ve ever been given regarding how to drive targeted traffic to your web sites, salespages, squeeze pages and affiliate links, nothing will compare to the FREE Top Traffic Tips Simulcast tomorrow night at 9pm Eastern (6pm Pacific)!

Internet marketing ‘big-dogs’ Willie Crawford and Doug Champigny are going to rock the house on the phone and on the web, detailing the 14 different traffic generation techniques they use to each do 6-figures a year online year after year. And best of all, the call is free as long as you register for it on the Top Traffic Tips website, sister site to this blog.

This simulcast, with your choice of teleseminar or webinar, will be your only chance to hear this information for free – the recording and transcript will ONLY be available as a paid product. So be sure to register right now for the call, then be online or on the phone for it tomorrow night, July 2nd, 2009, at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific.

Technorati Tags: targeted traffic teleseminar, targeted traffic webinar, top traffic tips simulcast, Willie Crawford, Doug Champigny, online success

Last post we talked about how you could get massive free traffic from Twitter by following the steps laid out in the Advanced Twitter Marketing System. Today we’ll look at how you can get more targeted traffic by tying your Twitter marketing into the power of PLR products.

For today’s example we’ll be using the PLR Spectacular bundle that’s just been released, both becuse it’s topical and because the entire bundle is under $20, meaning it’s with reach of everyone trying to generate more traffic.

This PLR bundle is on building your business with social networking, so it’s a bundle every webmaster, traffic developer and affiliate marketer should be reading anyway. For our purposes, it’s the Social Networking report and squeeze page that are important – take those, edit the report to include your name, your URL and your recommended links (i.e. your sites, blogs and affiliate links you’re trying to drive traffic to). If you’re not familiar with the process of converting PLR to your own unique products, follow along with the step-by-step how-to videos on using PLR in the PLR Tutorial videos package.

Put your autoresponder’s opt-in signup code into the included squeeze page, and get it online on any of your sites. You can plug this into your existing e-zine, or start a new opt-in list by using the 5 PLR articles included in the PLR bundle. On the download page for the report you’re giving away, add your links again, inviting people to visit your other sites. And if you’re using the 5 MySpace PLR articles as a new e-course, add a PS under the issues, each inviting them to check out another of your links. For a final 6th issue, thank them for taking the e-course, explain that they’ve come to the end of it, suggest they sign up for another of your lists, and then once again invite them to visit your main site/blog/affiliate link.

Now getting traffic to all of those links is as simple as giving away that free report! Post a tweet offering the free social networking report every few hours on your Twitter account, put a link to it on your FaceBook and MySpace pages, your Squidoo lenses, Hub Pages, Google Knols, etc, and announce the new resource on your blogs.

Everyone likes getting free information online, especially when that information is on one fo the hottest trends online at the moment – and the best of it is that social networking isn’t just huge in the Internet marketing or affiliate marketing arenas, but has become a phenomenon right across the boards, covering every niche you may be trying to drive traffic to!

It doesn’t have to be this particular PLR to use this system, obviously, but you can see why a Social Networking PLR bundle would work best, since it does indeed fit every niche. Otherwise, you’ll have to get PLR from each niche you’re in and set up and promote each one separately, but the aggregate results wil;l be roughly the same. Personally I’d say use the social networking PLR, since all of your promotional efforts would then target ONE resource, and that one resource can drive traffic to EACH niche you’re operating in.

As a related promotional vehicle, here’s a free list-building video that shows a powerful way to use that report to get more signups and thereby more traffic, using a free system you probably haven’t seen before.

Now go get the PLR bundle, get your free download set up, watch the video and set that up too – all the Top Traffic Tips in the world can’t help if you don’t put what you learn into practice!

Technorati Tags: getting traffic from twitter, getting traffic from plr, using plr for traffic from twitter